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THE DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU -- PREFACE |
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Preface Maurice Joly is the author of the Dialogue in Hell, the major source of the world's most infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The present consideration of Joly follows precedent by first mentioning this association and briefly discussing the Protocols. The fact remains that it is principally through the Protocols and not as an author in his own right that the name Maurice Joly ever became known to later generations. The Protocols was concocted at the turn of the century , about two decades after Joly's death. This anti-Semitic tract had a formative influence on many of the principal founders of the Nazi regime in Germany. In the face of evidence proving the Protocols' fraudulence, Hitler himself still tried to vindicate the essential "truth" of its teaching about the Jews. He also put the Protocols to frequent use as propaganda and intended to indoctrinate future leaders of his Reich by having it read in his "Youth Schools." The Protocols purported to tell the real purpose behind the Congress of the Zionist Movement, which met in Basel, Switzerland, (1897) and was called by Theodor Herzl to explore the possibilities for founding a Jewish homeland. The "secret protocols" of that Congress were presented as evidence of a political project of a wholly different character from that framed largely in response to the aspirations of a beleaguered and persecuted people. The Protocols would have the Basel meeting understood as only the latest convocation of Jews who, dispersed to key centers of influence around the world, secretly met to coordinate their activities in pursuit of their common goal of universal domination. Nazi propaganda used them as stunning "proof' of the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy, then supposedly on the verge of bringing to fruition an age-old dream of universal rule. The Protocols, remarkably enough, has been connected with many of the more prominent political figures of the twentieth century as well as some of its most cataclysmic events. Scholars have surmised that the Protocols was fabricated in Russia to influence the direction of policy under Czar Nicholas II. Its revelations were meant to serve a dual purpose of impressing the gullible Nicholas and mobilizing mass support for a counterrevolutionary move against the agents of liberalism and change. Key figures in the government of Nicholas were said to be the tools of the Protocols conspiracy to undermine the Czar and Holy Russia. The Czar was impressed by the Protocols and apparently kept it close at hand. The Bolsheviks even found a copy in his family's immediate possession at the time of its bloody assassination. The role it played in several of the more infamous pogroms of the era give evidence of its capacity to incite the Russian masses. After the 1917 Revolution, White Russian emigres evidently brought copies of the Protocols to Germany. There it found wider publication and quickly appeared in translation in most of the literate countries of the world. The influence of the Protocols did not end with the fall of the Third Reich. It has found a new lease on life among the enemies of Israel in the Middle East. An updated version, tailored to the politics of that region, is today making new converts to its teaching. It is also back in vogue in Russia among the many far-right groups that have mushroomed in the troubled times of post-Communism. Brisk sales of the Protocols have been reported in other areas of the world. It was linked to neo-Nazi movements that plagued Argentina when the anarchy of the 1970s momentarily opened the door to power for Fascist groups that eerily patterned themselves on the doctrines and tactics of Hitler. More recently, the Protocols has found its way to Muslim countries in Asia and have reportedly even appeared in Japan. Mahatin bin Mohammad of Malaysia appeals to a mindset, not too distant from the Protocols, when he purports to see the economic crisis in Southeast Asia at the end of the century as a product of global capitalism led by Jewish financiers. Such events remind us of the continued virulence of political anti-Semitism and its capacity to break out anew long after the end of the Nazi era and far from the borders of Israel. It is important to emphasize that Joly himself is not an anti-Semite. [1] More- over, the Dialogue shows him to be an intransigent enemy of the kind of tyrannical politics which, ironically, the Protocols served in a later century. The pre-sent study endeavors to restore the integrity of Joly's intentions in writing the Dialogue and to fairly assess his still timely contribution to the understanding of modern politics. It is the first attempt at a full commentary on the Dialogue in Hell. Repressed in Joly's own time, it largely remains in an unwarranted obscurity today because of its unfortunate association with the infamous forgery that continues to overshadow it. Notes 1. According to Hans Speier, "The Truth in Hell: Maurice Joly on Modem Despot- ism," Polity 10 (1977): 32, "genocidal anti- semitism" is "the only trait of modem totalitarianism that Joly did not foresee." Yet, "ironically enough," it was "precisely that which his book-perverted by forgers-helped so much to promote."
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